Each domain must maintain and enforce a registration/use policy for domains registered under it and for users who access the net or use services in it. A domain registration, even a Top-Level Domain, may be revoked or transferred if the responsible party fails to enforce this policy.

These policies are inherited from the higher domain, unless a vote of the higher domain authorizes a subdomain to overrule it's policy. For the purpose of inheritance, all OpenNIC TLDs are considered to inherit the general policies of the OpenNIC as their parent domain. This isn't as big a deal as it might sound, since if your don't like any of the TLDs' policies, you are encouraged to organize your own.

Note: These policies apply to Top-Level Domains as well as to lower-level domains, though due to some odddities in common email software (which will not deal with an address whose domain block only has one part) the phrase "[domain]" used below should be interpreted as "opennic.[TLD]" for Top-Level Domains.

Every domain registered through OpenNIC must maintain valid email targets for the following address:

"hostmaster@[domain]"

"abuse@[domain]"

Additionally, every domain must also maintain valid targets for the traditional administrative addresses associated with any protocols they support, such as:

"webmaster@[domain]"

"postmaster@[domain]"

Every domain which accepts subdomain registration, must maintain a web site at "www.[domain]" for managing these registrations and for keeping the OpenNIC members who hold sub-domains in that domain informed of its status and activities.

In accordance with the terms of the OpenNIC charter, each TLD maintainer is responsible for establishing and maintaining the policies and procedures to be used for registering new domains. Please use this link to locate the page for the TLD you are interested in registering a domain with.

OpenNIC does not lay claim to any gTLDs created by members in the OpenNIC network. These gTLDs belong to the respectful user in the OpenNIC community. Conflicting gTLDs will not be supported by OpenNIC.

Unless the Domain policy explicitly approves it, no spamming will be tolerated either to or from OpenNIC domains. Any user who spams either from or to an address in a domain which does not explicitly approve their activity will have all of their domain registrations revoked and will not be allowed to rejoin the OpenNIC for a minimum of six months.

Similarly, abuse of other users' equipment will only be acceptible if the policies of both the source computer's domain and the target computer's domain explicitly allow it. As with spamming, all domain registrations will be revoked and the user will not be allowed to rejoin for at least six months. Anyone interested in this form of recreation should contact the Discussion email list about setting up a TLD for boxes to be used this way.

An OpenNIC domain is not property, it is your address. This is the guiding principle for dispute resolution with OpenDNS.

Some TLDs will be commercial spaces, so various countries' Trademark laws will apply to them. If a court of legitimate jusisdiction rules that a registration in a commercial TLD violates a Trademark, OpenNIC will revoke that registration as a courtesy to that country. Some TLDs will be established for purposes, such as parody, which are inconsistant with corporate or commercial activity, or will explicitly forbid corporations from holding subdomains. These spaces will, by definition, not be possible to mistake for a Trademark holder's own site and therefore no country's Trademark law will be considered to apply to domains within them.

In all cases, by registering with the OpenNIC, registrants will agree to accept the vote of the OpenDNS users' community as binding resolution of the dispute.